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Archive for February, 2011

Fork Soup

February 26th, 2011 Comments off

I decided that the donor 20″ forks I had were too ugly, heavy and rusted up to be reasonable candidates for my recumbent. There’s no motivation for front suspension on a long wheelbase bike*, so here’s a recipe for a better solution.

Ingredients:

1 set of 26″ forks from my old bike
1 20″ wheel for testing

Preparation Time: 30 mins

Cut the dropouts from the forks, and grind off any stubborn tubing. Measure the clearance from the bridge to the dropout slots on the old 20″ fork. Mark the same distance on the 26″ fork and trim to length. Fit dropouts and check by installing the wheel. Adjust until wheel is centred, removing a small amount of metal each time. Once alignment is attained, tap dropouts home with hammer. Check again then weld.

Here’s how mine turned out (before welding):

and with the wheel in place:

I like this much better than the originals.

*As I won’t be leaning on handlebars on top of the front forks I won’t feel the bumps in the road so acutely. The long boom will flex a little too, smoothing out the ride.